


Ash

by angel_gidget



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics), Red Robin (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Cassie isn't okay either, F/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, but she and Tim have to trade off on who gets to the shoulder to cry on, it is Cassie's turn here, tim is not okay, tiny and obscure YJ references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 15:03:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10165610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_gidget/pseuds/angel_gidget
Summary: Cassie is relieved to find Tim apparently in one piece. But one should always reserve judgement until one has had a closer look.





	

Gotham is ash.

Cassie blinks, then blinks again, but there is still a smoking crater where the city should be.

Her fingers clutch the trace-reader in her hand, and she nearly breaks it before she jerks herself out of her funk and fumbles with the device, nearly dropping it. The light is still blinking, which means Tim is alive. He survived this.

Pity and hope and urgency tangle together as she focuses on the signal.

Gotham may be dust, but it’s suburbs are simply a wreck. Debris and lingering fires, several houses still standing, if no longer livable. Tim’s blinking light quickens as she hovers over a large house with a tree crashed in through its second story.

Tim is sitting on one of its branches looking outward. She’s not sure if he even sees her, with his eyes wide and directed towards where Gotham should be.  She swoops in, taking him into her arms. She thinks a moment too late that he might be injured, that maybe she shouldn’t be hugging him quite so tight, but he doesn’t flinch. If he’s hurt, he doesn’t feel it. 

She places a kiss in his hair, over the place where it hides his old burn scar. He probably can’t feel that either in the moment, but she thought he was dead five minutes ago, so she figures she’s allowed.

When she pulls away, his eyes are on her, and she finds herself straightening her shoulders. Even now—especially now—he’s still got too much mystery.

“… would…” his voice chokes off, and she wants to pull him close and shush him. Something tells her she doesn’t want to hear it. But instead, she waits.

“Tim?”

“When we were kids…” his gaze loses focus, and Cassie pauses with him. “When we were kids, you said we were doing something mythic.”

The way he draws out the middle of the word catches in her memory; it’s the way she said it so long ago.

She could never forget that night. She might have acted a bit shy afterward, but she’d been proud of that moment. She’d successfully put what she felt into words, and she’s been so sure of the rightness of it.

“I said they’d have to pry it from my cold dead fingers before they could take it away.”

Tim nods. When he finally looks her in the eye, she can see the water tracks raked through the soot on his cheeks, the cuts and bruises on his temple, and the apology in eyes that are too blue for all their tears.

“Would you hate me if I didn’t wait that long?”

Cassie isn’t sure what she expected. Not screaming and crying necessarily, but perhaps anger. Fury. Or a cold denial, burying all the pain down deep, all things he’s done before in different extremes. But she looks at him. Really looks at him. His bo staff is cast aside, his gloves and cowl with it, as though they’ve already ceased to be a part of him. Any other day, he wouldn’t do this. Wouldn’t allow himself to be anything other than careful about exposing the face that’s seen billboards on more than one occasion.

But this is different.  That is is whole world behind her, in crumbled burning particles, dissected and violated before his eyes.

And now there’s only one feeling left.

He’s tired. So very tired.

“No. I’d never hate you. Never. Tim…”

When she holds him, he buries his face in her shoulder, and she lets him. In turn, Tim lets her carry him away.

_He survived this_ , she tells herself.

She holds the proof in her arms, but in her head…

… it echoes like a lie.


End file.
